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Killer faces execution for island murder
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ATLANTA - A man scheduled to be put to death Tuesday for the murder of a female neighbor who spurned his advances has asked a state panel to spare his life.

Robert Newland was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to die for the slaying of Carol Sanders Beatty, 27, a former state and national amateur diving champion who was killed in the garden of her St. Simons Island home.

Newland's attorney Brian Kammer said in court filings that he would ask the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles in a closed-door meeting Monday to commute the sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole. He said Newland is remorseful and that the crime was a result of alcohol and drug abuse.

He also asked the Georgia Supreme Court to strike down the sentence on grounds that the punishment is disproportionate and arbitrary.

Authorities said Newland went to Beatty's duplex on May 30, 1986, after a night of heavy drinking and tried to kiss her. When she refused his advances, scratching and slapping him, he drew a knife and slashed her neck and stabbed her repeatedly.

Police soon found Beatty laying in her garden and rushed her to the hospital. A doctor noticed she was moving her lips to try to say something, but couldn't pronounce the words.

He summoned a detective, who asked her if she was saying "Bob." She nodded her head. When asked the last name of her assailant, the detective ticked through the alphabet. When he reached "N'' she "nodded her head vigorously," and squeezed his hand, court documents say.

She ended up spelling out "N-E-W-L-A" and when the detective asked if the last name was Newland, she nodded again and squeezed his hand. She would die hours later.

Newland, meanwhile, ran to the home he shared with a girlfriend, prosecutors say. He washed himself off with a house and tried hiding in a small attic space, they say, but authorities soon apprehended him.

He told police after his arrest he "grabbed her and I threw her down and somehow the knife came in my hand and started stabbing her."

"I was drunk, I don't know why I did it," he told authorities. "I had no reason for it."

A jury found Newland guilty of murder and aggravated assault with intent to rape in August 1987 and recommended he be sentenced to death. Several rounds of state and federal appeals have since upheld the conviction and sentence.

Newland's attorneys argued that the confession was involuntary and that he was coerced. And his appellate attorneys contended that Newland had ineffective counsel because his trial lawyer failed to convince the court that the confession was inadmissible.

But state and federal courts concluded the court had properly followed Georgia law and found no "constitutional deficiencies" in his trial counsel. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the death sentence in a ruling last year, concluding that Newland confessed to the killing.

Newland would be the first Georgia death row inmate to be executed this year.

Jack Alderman was put to death in September for the 1974 murder of his wife in Chatham County.

Troy Davis was scheduled to be put to death in October for the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer, but a federal panel stayed the execution. His case is still pending in federal appeals court.


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Book review: Author digs into mining's complicated past and present in 'River of Lost Souls'
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Jonathan Thompson will speak about his book "River of Lost Souls" at the King's English Bookshop on Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. - photo by Amanda Olson
"RIVER OF LOST SOULS: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Spill," by Jonathan Thompson, Torrey House Press, 275 pages (nf)

Plenty has been written about the very small world of a mining town and the very broad reach of a beleaguered industry. From Loretta Lynns iconic song "Coal Miners Daughter," to the 2010 nail-biting coverage of 33 trapped Chilean miners, to the hit Broadway musicals "Paint Your Wagon" and "Billy Elliot," mining is a global story, and its one of heartbreak, hard work and hard times.

Jonathan Thompsons "River of Lost Souls" examines the many facets of risk involved in taking resources from below the earths surface. An environmental journalist, Thompson has reported on southwest Colorado for over 20 years. This book is special, however, because the Four Corners area of Colorado is his current and ancestral home. Thompson is writing about minings ecological, social, financial and political impact on his land, his landscape, his water, his people. That makes "River of Lost Souls" more than a regular reporting job.

Thompson begins with the Gold King Mine wastewater disaster of 2015, which the EPA caused while attempting to drain water near the mines entrance. The spill sent 3 million gallons of waste and tailings into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River and part of the San Juan River watershed which drains into the Colorado, affecting the Utah, Colorado and New Mexico parts of that watershed as well as the Navajo Nation.

From there, Thompson jumps into far stretches of time to 1765, when a Spanish explorer named the Animas River; to 10,000 years earlier, when Paleo-Indians roamed the rivers valley; to the meridian of time, when the ancestors of the Zuni, Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo people inhabited the land for 500 years; to the mid-1800s and the Swedes who came to Silverton, Colorado, to mine.

Its a grand scope, but telling any story of landscape is telling a very grand story.

It also makes a complex story difficult to follow. Thompsons time warps are important, but they are jarring. His time jumps need clear dates, and Thompson doesnt always make them available. A map would also be useful. Thompsons writing is good, but his sentences can be dense and require readers to do their own mining for the riches the writing embeds. The work is worthwhile, however, as there are many moving parts in any story about mines land, culture, policy, history, money, inevitable disaster and Thompson works to examine all of them.

"River of Lost Souls" is a thoughtful read, but not a quick one. Because Thompsons writings come from 20 years of his newspaper reports, the overall feeling can be disjointed and sparse, which is distracting if one is expecting to follow a tenable thread. This is not a typical narrative with a cast of characters and a traditional story arc. Readers should approach this text as the investigation it is: puzzle pieces of a larger-than-life story that is eons old. If you are the kind of reader who wants it laid out cleanly, this is not that book. But, to Thompsons point, nothing is clean about mining that has never been the case.

Thompsons best writing is in his descriptions of people and places. His telling of how he came to Silverton is familiar and engaging. If readers approach the book with care and attention, they will be rewarded with savoring these descriptive passages when they happen.
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